Shiva Najafi

Erfan Bookstore

Creating a game to be happy

In recent years, Iranians have been known as the most angry people and the 4th gloomy nation in the world. Our approach to design Erfan Bookstore was to create a method for reducing this burden of grief in people. In order to fulfill this principal, we have created a game to persuade people to smile. Main strategy is to reward happy people: the more smile, the more reward.

Nature of a bookstore has a static space. We utilized light and color to create a dynamic and living space: two interconnected and effective elements on the atmosphere of space. Moreover, colors influence climatic comfort of people and their psychological and behavioral characteristics.

This project with 31 square meters is located on the second floor of an official building. Client had been requested a space with maximum capacity to exhibit books. The limited area persuaded us to merely use the walls more functional and entire surface of the walls have been allocated to bookshelves.

Limited budget of the project lead us to design a simple form (with easy constructability) and use inexpensive materials, for instance, use of recycling material of PVC pipes to hold colored piece of glasses and cover the source of light in the ceiling.

Being on the second floor caused that there was no direct interaction between pedestrians and the store. In fact the ceiling of the project was the only surface that could be seen by pedestrians. Therefore in the process of designing, we brought up the ceiling as an architectural element in urban space and decided to create a lasting image in mind of pedestrians with fun of light and color in the ceiling instead of traditional glass showcase.

Spatial scenario of the project is in such a way that first face and smile of customers have been captured by a camera located in front of entrance door and analyzed (detected) with a software which is exclusively designed and programmed. The software rank the smile level of customers from 1 to 8 and based on which regulate space lighting from cold to warm spectrum respectively. Reward of smiling customers is a space with warm lights and happy feelings. This is an incentive for being happy and more smile.